SwiftKey for iOS adds 68 languages, gets design overhaul and new themes

SwiftKey, the keyboard app that lets you trace your finger around the letters to type words, has updated its list of supported languages in the iOS version of the app. SwiftKey has added 68 new world languages, bringing the total supported number up to 106, more than any other iOS keyboard. 

• Best iOS keyboard: The top third-party ones to try, and how to set them up

New languages can, naturally, be found in the ‘Languages’ section of the app, and are marked by a green dot to indicate they’re newly available. You can download any of them to be installed, and can use two different languages at the same time. When you start typing, SwiftKey will automatically detect which language you’re using and provide relevant predictions based on the language you’re writing in. 

SwiftKey has also introduced two new animated themes: Cogs and ZigZag. Cogs has different sized circles moving around behind the keys, while ZigZag has 3D lines moving around. The two default themes, Nickel Light and Nickel Dark, have been rejuvenated with a cleaner look to better resemble the default iOS keyboard.

The SwiftKey update is available to download now, so head to the App Store to install it and take advantage of the latest features. 

Destiny 2 Gameplay Premiere watch it again here, see the campaign mode

Activision and Bungie unveiled Destiny 2 gameplay for the first time today, with a special event in Los Angeles where it revealed a whole stack of details about the forthcoming game and showed full-on game footage.

Pocket-lint has also been getting hands-on time with multiple modes across the PS4 and PC versions of the game. We will be posting our thoughts in a bit, so check those out later, but for now you can watch the main gameplay reveal all over again, as we host it right here.

What happened at the Destiny 2 Gameplay Premiere?

Bungie team members took to the stage in an aircraft hanger in LA to show the first part of the campaign mode, Homecoming, and revealed several key features of the new chapter in the franchise.

It kicked off at 10am PT on Thursday 18 May (7pm in the UK) and ran for around an hour.

One of the big new features coming to the Destiny universe for the first time is Clans. Players can set themselves up in clans, with customised team banners. But rather than exclude solo players, there is also a Guided Game mode that allows single-players to join a clan for a raid or strike, so that they too can get to experience all the wonders the game has to offer.

There are new worlds and locations, including Earth, Io, Nessus and Titan. And there are tonnes of side missions and hidden sectors to locate and plunder. In short, Destiny 2 is Destiny but ramped up to the extreme.

• E3 2017: Rumours, press conferences and what to expect from the world’s biggest games show

Where can I watch the Destiny 2 Gameplay Premiere again?

You can watch the entire hour-long keynote again (or for the first time) below:

You can also watch it on destinythegame.com or Bungie’s own Twitch channel.

Where can I find out more about Destiny 2?

You can find out a lot more about Destiny 2 in our extensive round-up feature (which we are updated constantly). It has trailers and other info we know or have heard about so far. You can find it here: Destiny 2: Release date, screens, formats and everything you need to know

Destiny 2 will be released for PS4, Xbox One and PC on 8 September 2017. 

Vevo’s Apple TV app takes cues from Spotify

Music lovers with Apple TVs, it’s time to get moderately excited — because the tvOS Vevo app is getting a hefty overhaul. From tomorrow, Vevo will let owners of fourth generation Apple TVs experience an endless wave of curated music videos like it’s 1999 all over again.

With an entirely redesigned UI and a focus entirely on music, Vevo on tvOS allows users to keep the music videos coming, featuring various playlists curated by the company. With these bespoke mixes being divided into genre, time of day and even created around big events, the company is essentially creating the Spotify of music videos. The Spotify comparisons don’t stop there, however, with Vevo claiming that its app will learn from you, personalizing the experience around your browsing habits. In a nice touch, users will also be able to browse for other videos while the main video is playing thanks to the app’s new ‘peak-inside-playlist’ UI.

Not content with just taking a page out of Spotify’s book, it looks like Vevo has seen fit to pilfer the company’s playbook. Yet, with YouTube’s stream of related videos not always hitting the right notes, this more bespoke approach to music video queueing makes enough sense for us to welcome the fairly blatant plagiarism.

Apple patented (and made) a pizza box to rid your life of soggy crust

The tech-food crossover hall of fame is filled with concepts that are more stunt than solution. Consider KFC’s phone-charging take out box or its ‘tray typer’ for texting with greasy fingers, or even the recent Guardians of the Galaxy 2 soundtrack embedded in a Doritos chip bag. Gimmicks, all. But unbeknownst to everyone, there was a bigger tech dog trying to revolutionize food packaging: Apple bent its divine design will to create a container that would, once and for all, keep your pizza from getting soggy.

The patent, filed in July 2010, describes in convoluted legalese a circular container with holes in the top that vents air and moisture to keep grease from congealing. It’s made of environmentally-friendly recycled materials, of course, and boasts enough ridges and circles to look suitably futuristic, like a certain Apple mega-building. Apparently, Apple Park cafe chief Francesco Longoni had a hand in the design. And if you think leveraging Silicon Valley’s greatest minds toward fixing a food mess problem isn’t worth time, you clearly don’t know the value of a grease-free workspace.

Via: Wired

Source: US Patent and Trade Office

Fujifilm’s SQ10 is an instant camera for the Instagram generation

Instant film cameras have been making a comeback in recent years, and Fujifilm is partially responsible for this. The manufacturer’s Instax Mini 8, for instance, is a best-seller on Amazon, which may have to do with the fact it only costs around $70. But the company seems to think people are willing to pay way more than that for one of its Instax shooters. Enter the Square SQ10, a hybrid digital instant camera that costs $280, offering the best of both worlds at a premium. It features a newly minted CMOS sensor (1/4-inch) with a 28.5mm f/2.4 fixed lens and an image processor that, Fuji says, will push out the best shots yet from an Instax product.

On the back of the SQ10, there’s a 3-inch, 460,000-dot LCD (no touchscreen) and a physical dial for browsing the camera’s menu. Around that dial are six buttons, which let you do things like set exposure, control vignette effect, click to print and select between 10 image filters. Yes, it’s like Instagram but in real life. While the SQ10 doesn’t support WiFi, Bluetooth or NFC, you do have the option to transfer your shots via microSD — the aspect ration is 1:1, hence the Square moniker. As for battery life, Fujifilm says you’ll get close to 160 prints from a single charge, and you can recharge it via USB.

Compared to the Instax Mini 8, the SQ10 is a little chunky, but that’s to be expected given that this model has a built-in screen and a large metal ring around the lens that acts as the power button. The good thing about its bulkiness is that it makes it feel like an actual camera, rather than a toy. Fujifilm also put two shutter buttons on the SQ10, making it easy to take pictures as you’re gripping it with either your left or right hand.

The Instax Square SQ10 comes with 10 prints included, and each set after is going to cost you roughly $18. That’s important because the camera alone is already $280, so you could end up spending a few hundred bucks in a short period of time. If money isn’t a problem though, you can pre-order it now from stores such as B&H, with shipments expected to arrived by the end of this week.

The FCC Chairman still thinks it’s 1996

FCC chairman Ajit Pai sounds like a broken record.

“Light touch framework.”

“Light touch approach.”

“Light touch regulation.”

As an ideological concept it seems reasonable. Especially to a conservative such as Pai who believes that the government shouldn’t “pick winners and losers” to use a favorite phrase of republicans. Except when you actually look closely at the chairman’s argument about how to regulate internet service providers, it collapses under its own misguided logic.

Perhaps Pai’s favorite touchstone when arguing in favor of returning ISPs to being classified as a Title I information service (instead of a Title II common carrier) is the Clinton administration. In April he asked this misleading set of questions:

Do we want the government to control the Internet? Or do we want to embrace the light-touch approach established by President Clinton and a Republican Congress in 1996 and repeatedly reaffirmed by Democratic and Republican FCCs alike?

Let’s ignore the bit about the government controlling the internet, which is not what net neutrality is or what the rules under Title II will allow. Instead let’s focus on the last bit about the “light touch” used by President Clinton. The TL;DR version of Pai’s argument is that Title II as established under the 1934 Communications Act is outdated and is not equipped to effectively regulate the internet. Instead we should return to rules established in 1996.

The problem is, when it comes to the internet, 1996 might as well be 1934. In 1996 there was no Google, Facebook or Netflix. Broadband penetration in the US sat at around 0 percent. The internet was a new industry that was still finding its way. The internet thrived under this light touch approach because it was in an experimental phase. Only 16 percent of Americans had access to the internet in 1996 and those who did relied on dial up.

The other flaw in this argument is that the changes made to the law by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 have made the internet more vulnerable to the very abuses Title II seeks to prevent.

Pai has said that “We decided to abandon successful policies solely because of hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom.” Except they aren’t hypothetical. Thank’s to the Telecommunications Act’s Title III, which allows for media cross-ownership, we have immense consolidation in the US of service providers, studios and news outlets.

Comcast is the largest internet provider in the country. It’s also the largest broadcaster and cable TV provider in the nation. And now it’s dipping its toes into mobile. But Comcast also owns NBCUniversal, NBC, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, DreamWorks, USA, Bravo, SyFy, E!, a bunch of regional sports stations and more.

And Comcast has already been caught, repeatedly, violating the spirit of net neutrality, if not the law. In both 2012 and 2015 the company came under fire for excluding its own streaming services from data caps, while counting Netflix and Hulu, putting them at a distinct disadvantage. This even led to an investigation by the Department of Justice in 2012.

Then in 2014 Netflix started noticing a steep decline in speeds on Comcast networks. While there’s no evidence the company artificially throttled speeds, there is evidence that the ISP let aging equipment at key points languish degrading the quality. Ultimately Netflix was forced cut out its own ISP and pay Comcast to ensure its videos streamed at an acceptable rate.

And Engadget’s parent company Verizon is hardly innocent either. This of course drew the attention of the FCC, and is part of what led the agency to reconsider its approach to net neutrality.

Ultimately moving moving broadband back being a Title I service will let the ISPs choose the winners or losers, no the public. And the government will be powerless to stop them.

The truth is the wolves are at the door of net neutrality and Ajit Pai is (wittingly or not) laying out a welcome mat.

Title II of the Telecommunications act is not perfect, but it was designed in part to keep monopolies in check. And the media conglomerates of todays internet are emergent monopolies — not scrappy .com startups looking to make a name for themselves on this new fangled world wide web.

A ‘Dark Crystal’ prequel is coming to Netflix

Who needs new ideas when you have the genius of Jim Henson to fall back on? Following recent news that an (unnecessary) sequel to cult classic Labyrinth is in the works, The Jim Henson Company today announced it’s producing a new series for Netflix based on ’80s masterpiece The Dark Crystal. Called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the ten-episode show will be set years before the events of the film. “When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis’ power, they set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their word,” a short description of the premise reads.

As much as I dread seeing another of my childhood favorites regurgitated for profit, the brief teaser trailer Netflix has released looks promising. Flashes of half-finished puppets show the goal is to recreate, at least in part, the original visual style of the ’80s classic. Fans will also be pleased to hear that Brian Froud, who served as conceptual designer for Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, is on board to help bring the various creatures of Thra to life. There’s no word on any release date as yet, but filming is due start this fall, according to Rolling Stone.

I dare say any more about the fantastical backdrops and creatures of The Dark Crystal in case you haven’t seen it, because you really, really should. Here’s to hoping Aughra makes a cameo in the new series at the very least, or I’m jumping on a Landstrider and galloping away from this cruel, Garthim-loving world.

Via: One Perfect Shot (Twitter)

Source: The Jim Henson Company, Netflix

‘Destiny 2’ plays matchmaker so you aren’t stuck with weirdos

Bungie wants to make it easier to join and play with other people in Destiny 2. Previously, clans were a complicated affair, making you log on to Bungie.net and connect your PSN or Xbox Live account to join them. During a live event today, Bungie revealed that a revamped Clan and matchmaking system will exist in the game itself. This and other new features fell like a welcome push to make the Destiny 2 experience more comfortably social.

In Destiny 2, the matchmaking system will help avoid putting you with other people who don’t play together as a team. When you join a clan in the game now, all your matches will be with people in your same clan, even if you’re not in a party with them. If you haven’t chosen a clan yet, you will have the option to match with one. Think of it as auditioning clans you might want to join.

In addition, Bungie has created “guided games” to match single players up with others to do standing dungeon Raids and the weekly unique Nightfall Strikes. These types of events require teams of players that work together to beat them; this new feature seems aimed at making that happen even without a group of buddies.

Introducing Guided Games.

In Destiny 2, solo players looking for groups can team up with Clans for challenges like Raids and Nightfalls. pic.twitter.com/HYpGHMKCJ2

— Destiny The Game (@DestinyTheGame) May 18, 2017

Slated for a September release, Destiny 2 will include a new story campaign, new subclasses to refine your character’s abilities and a streamlined Director interface that will let you jump from planet to planet without having to go to a separate orbit screen. In a move enabled by Activision’s ownership of Bungie and Blizzard, the PC version of the game will only be available via Blizzard’s Battle.net site, while console players will get physical and digital versions from Bungie. If you pre-order the game, you’ll also be able to jump into the early beta.

Source: Destiny/Twitter

Google Lens offers a clear view of the company’s future

Google Lens is both a return to form for the search giant, and a tantalizing glimpse into what lies ahead. Google’s early claim to fame was its ability to efficiently index the web and fetch search results quickly, bringing some much needed organization to the chaotic early days of the internet. Lens, similarly, uses computer vision and AI to make sense of your photos, videos and the real world. It’s basically Google search for everything outside of screens.

Most intriguingly, Lens is yet another way for Google to expand on its original mission statement: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Though we’ve only seen brief a brief, pre-produced demonstration of Lens, it looks compelling. Through the Google Assistant, it can identify the type of flower you’re looking at or highlight reviews and ratings when you’re pointing your phone at a storefront. We’ve seen glimpses of these capabilities in Google Goggles and Yelp’s Monocle, both of which showed off the potential of AR, but were too early to be genuinely useful. Now, with the advantage of improved computer vision algorithms, better cameras and more capable devices and networks, Google is in a much better place to make AR an essential computing tool.

With Lens’s more advanced capabilities, we’re seeing just how far Google’s AR technology has come. Pointing your camera at a concert venue marquee, for example, lets you easily buy tickets or add events to your calendar. You could also quickly join a WiFi network by focusing Lens on a router’s login information. (Of course, that assumes nobody changed the network name or password.)

If you want to understand what makes Lens truly important, rather than just a quick whiz-bang keynote demo, you have to look at where computing is headed. We’re moving away from older input mechanisms, like keyboards and mice, and towards things like voice commands and computer vision. Devices of the future will need to see and hear the world to make sense of it. And, they’ll need to do all of that without any user input.

With Lens, Home and its larger focus on AI, Google is setting itself up to for the next big wave of computing. We’re already seeing Amazon invest in that with Alexa and its Echo devices; you can think of its upcoming camera-equipped Echo Look as a big step towards refining its computer vision capabilities. Microsoft also made it clear that it’s exploring all of these new facets of computing at its Build conference last week. The company is bringing Cortana to more devices and relying heavily on deep learning and computer vision with Story Remix.

While Lens has loads of potential, there are also reasons to be skeptical. Google’s AI capabilities have fallen short in the past, like when its Photos app mistakenly labeled black people as “gorillas.” As we rely more on technology to catalog and define the world’s information, companies like Google will have to make sure their algorithms reflect the nuances of human identity. Hiring a more diverse workforce would be a good a start.

For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2017, follow along here.

‘Snowpiercer’ director’s next film debuts on Netflix June 28th

A few years ago, Korean director Bong Joon Ho adapted a 70s French comic into film, creating the unexpectedly stunning and brutal Snowpiercer. The post-apocalypse movie barreled headlong into food scarcity, class warfare and child exploitation — topical issues even in our more “civilized” age. Ho’s next film, Okja, looks to pull a similar trick crashing outlandish characters into hot-button conflicts — and it’s coming to Netflix.

The movie tells the story of a girl, Mija (played by Ahn Seo-hyun), and her pet giant pig-hippo hybrid, the eponymous Okja. Unfortunately for their joyous love, the beast is the prototype for a genetically-Frankensteined race of livestock that will hyper-efficiently feed the world. That doesn’t sit well with a militant animal rights group, led by Paul Dano (Swiss Army Man) with Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead), who promise Mija they’ll free her adorable, massive pet and expose the livestock corporation’s head Miranda, played by a madcap Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer).

If the trailer is anything to go by, the film will be another loony, violent satire from a visionary director. See it on Netflix on June 28th.

Source: YouTube